Brick In the Wall
by Triple Crown
Summary: Louise Belcher is 16 years old. Her siblings have moved out and it's a little boring being an only sibling. Not for long, though. Her old bully, Logan, is back. And he's her teacher! Get ready for a wild ride, as teen Louise has to deal with Logan tormenting her once again and maybe discovers there's more to him than she thought. Louigan.
1. Chapter 1

Louise awoke to the sound of a powerdrill screeching nearby. Still in a half-asleep daze, she reached out to the phone on her night stand to see that she had a whole ten minutes before her alarm was set to go off. For a few seconds she entertained the idea of falling back asleep but the unloading of a truck on the road and the voices that accompanied it was just too much to ignore.

"Couldn't wait ten minutes could you!" She marched out of her bedroom door and to the bathroom to brush the morning funk off her teeth. After she brushed her hair and tied it back into pig tails, she sifted through the tiny square box in the medicine cabinet for the perfect barbell for the day. She settled on the one with a pot leaf and carefully slid it through her tongue, placing the tongue ring from the previous day in the box. She knew she probably should have washed it first, but it looked clean to her.

She returned to her bedroom to throw on a green tee and jeans. For a moment, she considered the pink bunny ears hanging from the pole on her bed frame. They were thread-bare, however, and she opted for a black beanie.

"Big day for my little girl," her mother said placing the eggs and bacon in front of her at the kitchen table.

"I guess," Louise replied.

"It's not every day that you start your junior year of high school," her mother reminded her. "I remember my junior year like it was yesterday," she continued still standing next to Louise. "Your Aunt Gale and I started our band. I got asked to my first high school dance. I got stood up at my first high school dance. I cried behind the dumpster because my date showed up with Cecilia Torres and it turns out I was his last resort if nobody better said yes."

Linda Belcher paused for a minute and she scrunched up the waist apron in her hands violently. "Y'know what? Never mind. Junior year sucked. You don't even have to do it. You can just go to senior year next year."

"Works for me," Louise chimed.

"You have to go to school," Bob piped in from behind the newspaper across the table.

There was still the steady stream of construction noise coming from outside as the three sat down for breakfast. It was more noise than they had been used to recently. The morning routine had been much more toned down that week since Gene had moved into his dorm. Bob and Linda had mentioned the difference once in passing to which Louise harassed them by telling her parents they didn't enjoy eating breakfast alone with the accident.

"Don't be silly. You were all accidents," Linda chuckled with a mouthful of bacon.

"Not helpful, Lin," Bob sighed.

"Wow, Dad, you think you'd learn how to wrap it after the first two mistakes." Louise ribbed her old man as she slid her dishes into the sink.

"Not appropriate, Louise," Bob said, trying to sound authoritative, but who was he trying to kid?

A short time later, Louise was bouncing her way down the stairs with pink backpack hanging from her shoulders and a skateboard tucked under her arm. The noise, she discovered, had been coming from the rental space to the left of the restaurant. A new sign was being drilled in above the storefront window that read:

Dawn of the Bread

In the window, there was a cardboard cut-out of a cartoon zombie with a speech bubble that had him say, "GRAAAAAAAIIIIIIINS!"

It seemed to Louise that there was a new business there every week. Maybe they would stay in business if they sold something people wanted. _Who goes to a store for bread? What do I do if I want a sandwich? Go to the bread store first, then the peanut butter store, then the jelly store? C'mon, people!_

Across the street, Jimmy Jr was bringing out tables from inside the restaurant to set up along the sidewalk. Louise unintentionally made eye contact and it was as awkward as she expected, but at least today he didn't yell across the street, asking when Tina was going to come visit.

As she rolled across the pavement, she passed other business preparing for the day. She hadn't been up this early all summer and it was weird to think that these people managed to get out of bed before 10AM every single morning. _Guess it doesn't matter as long as Coffee Waves is open_ , she thought optimistically.

The tiny coffee shop, a few blocks from the sea wall was her go-to for the morning sugar and caffeine to get her through a rough day. The first day of school was probably going to feel especially long and boring. Nobody ever learns anything on the first day, but that doesn't mean it's any more fun than the rest of the year.

A bell rang as she pushed through the door. She intentionally carried the skateboard with the underside facing outward so all the cool stickers were visible. There were decals for anarchy and heavy metal bands. Can't forget the pentagram with a goat head inscribed. Finally, there was the totally only-there-to-be-ironic Boys 4 Now sticker. The wait didn't look too bad. She might only be 10 minutes late to class. That was practically 15 minutes early.

She took her place behind the tall guy in the tweed jacket and khaki slacks. _Another wannabe professional chump trying to act like he isn't in a beach town,_ she mocked the back of his blond head. The line progressed to the point that tall, dork, and blandsome was set up to order.

"I'm sorry. I've never been in here before. I'll have a, um, a, uhhh…" Louise heard him stumbling to order from the screen of her phone.

"I guess I'll try the, uh, what comes in the #8?"

"ArE YoU FrIcKin KiDDInG mE!" Louise erupted at the guy. "We've been standing in line for like five minutes. What the frickin crap were you doing the whole time? Were you googling lamer jackets to buy?"

The barista at the cash register was shocked and obviously searching for how to handle the confrontation, clearly thinking that she didn't sign up for this. The tall man with the yellow hair just stared at her like he'd seen a ghost. "Louise?"

"Uh, yea. That's my name, don't wear it out. Who the heck are you and why can't you order a FRIGGIN COFFEE ALREADY?!"

"It's me, Logan. I remember when you were like, this high." He motioned with his hand to show how tall nine-year-old Louise Belcher had been.

Then, Louise remembered him. Why the crap was he acting like he was some old friend of the family. This guy made her childhood miserable. She ought to crooked up that straight smile of his for all the torment he gave her. _Here he is, thinking he's being charming in his dumb suit. Well, I got news for you, pal. You look pathetic._

Suddenly, she didn't have the stomach for coffee. _Screw this guy._ _First, I lose ten extra minutes of sleep. Then, I have to go to school after a wonderful summer of doing a big, fat load of nothing. Now, I can't even get my favorite drink in peace?_

"Sorry, I'd hang around, but I'm about to be late for school because some jerk didn't know what he wanted before he got to the register." With that, she turned and left the way she came, accidentally bumping some other customers in line.

"Oh, crap! I'm gonna be late, too!" Louise had reminded him of his own morning commitment.

She hurried out so that he didn't try getting in another word. The concrete flew under her wheels. Wagstaff High School awaited her, unchanged since she had last seen it. The red building was her old elementary school that had been redesignated as the high school and it honestly hadn't changed much in 7 years. A nice piece of familiarity in her life, especially since everything seemed to be changing at home.

The bell rang as she checked the walls for her name and homeroom, where she'd receive her schedule for the semester. The teachers didn't seem to mind that there were other students still in the hall on the first day, but they gave her dirty looks as she passed, as if to say, "Typical Louise Belcher. Always tardy." _Geez, it's the first day, guys. And you should actually be praising me. I planned on being a lot later._

As luck would have it, when Louise entered the classroom, she met with an uproar of other teens caught up in the excitement of reuniting with each other. The teacher was nowhere to be seen. As far as Wagstaff High was concerned, Louise Belcher was perfectly punctual. She found a seat in the front row (all the good ones at the back were taken) and proceeded to lean back in her chair with her feet propped up on the desk.

As she scrolled through a feed on her phone, she heard the door open. A man's panting accompanied the footsteps. _You were already late. Why run? Worried you were gonna later?_ It was then, as she peeked over the screen to take note of her new homeroom teacher, that she saw him. Their eyes met and she let out a high, drawn out scream.

"This is going to be a long year, isn't it?" Logan sighed in despair.


	2. Chapter 2

"WHAT THE CRAP!" Louise was standing behind her desk making wide, exaggerated motions with her hands at Logan.

"Calm down, Louise," Logan said as he took off his dorky tweed jacket and set it on the back of the chair at his desk. He grabbed a piece of chalk and started writing out MR. BUSH on the blackboard.

"Don't tell me to calm down. You're out here stalking me and I need to calm down?"

Logan's back was still to the class, writing his name. God, she was still so obnoxious. It was like the same bratty child that could reach things on the top shelf now. This was his first day. He was supposed to be professional. He was an adult. A college graduate. Time to earn a living and be mature.

"LOOOOOOGAN. HEY! I'm talking to you here, buddy." He had zoned out momentarily. "I said, get out of my school."

He turned toward the class. Every student was either watching him or Louise or shifting their gaze between the two. It was embarrassing. How was he supposed to make them respect him if their first impression was of another student bullying him. No way. He wasn't going to have it. He had gotten caught up in a silly nostalgia for his hometown and the kid he used to tease. He had forgotten just how bad she was and why he had picked on her.

"That's it, Louise," he leaned over his desk. "I wanted to be the cool teacher. I wanted to be the young teacher who remembers what it's like to be in high school, so I could be nice to students. But you know what? Now, five minutes into my teaching career, I'm giving my first detention."

"Pfft! You think I'm afraid of detention? I spend so much time there, I'm putting it down as an extracurricular on my college applications." Her arms were crossed and a hip jutted out as she shifted her weight to one foot. Logan looked her up and down momentarily, wondering how she could look the part of a grown woman, but still act like a kid.

"I'm the adult here, Louise!"

"You can't be the adult. You're like three years older than us. Can you even buy beer?"

"Oh, you really want to push me, don't you? Fine. You can have detention AND go to the principal's office. Now!"

Louise managed to march herself out of the room without any further protest. She grumbled and griped all the way to the office that she recognized very well from the previous two years at Wagstaff High. The secretary had her sit in silence in an uncomfortable chair as she waited. When she was finally told to enter, it was like something out of the Twilight Zone.

"Mr. Frond?" Louise gasped at the awkward man in the sweater vest behind the desk. She hadn't seen him in years, just like Logan, but today he reappeared to make her life a living hell. What was this, some sort of September Fool's joke?

"Good morning, Louise. I was wondering when I'd see you. I have to admit, I thought you'd make it at least until the end of the week."

Louise made her way to the chair in front of the hard, oak desk. His computer monitor sat to one side of the desk and the phone to the other. Mr. Frond clasped his hands and set them on the loose sheets of paper in front of him as he leaned in to engage her.

"Well, y'know, I'm all about exceeding expectations. Never sell yourself short. That kind of thing."

Mr. Frond cleared his throat with a weak cough. "Well, as happy as I am that you took something from our time here when you were in Elementary, I really do wish you could have applied it in more productive ways. I just got off the phone with Mr. Bush and he says that you're upset because you knew him from when he was your age and he thinks you need somebody to talk to about it."

Louise sat there, arms crossed, eyes rolling out of her head. She didn't need somebody to talk to. She needed somebody to kick his ass out of her school. Logan didn't belong there with her. Especially not in charge of her. He didn't belong in charge of anybody. He was a bully and he deserved to get strung up by the One-eyed Snakes.

"Now, Louise," Mr. Frond continued. "Sometimes it's difficult for us to adjust to change like this. Seeing someone you're familiar with in one position take on a new role can be confusing. I know what would help. Let's exercise our ABS."

Oh, God! Just no.

"Let's access our feelings," he insisted. "What specific feelings did you experience when you saw Mr. Bush in your classroom?"

"Angry, I guess."

"Why did seeing him there make you angry?"

"I don't know," she let out a deep breath while avoiding eye contact. "He's just not a good guy. He spent like 2 years picking on me. He stole my hat. My bunny ears hat! I had to call in a favor on a biker gang to get it back. I just hate him and his stupid face so much."

"Hmm, I see. I had a bully, too, when I was a kid."

"Really? You? No way! Shocking." The sarcasm passed right over Mr. Frond as he was lost in thought, recounting his own trauma. Louise could only imagine what kind of bullying that nerd endured.

"I could let Mr. Bush's detention order stand, but I don't think that's constructive. I'm all about new, creative solutions to problems in the classroom." He rubbed his chin and stared at the papers in front of him as the gears moved in his head.

 _Just give me detention,_ Louise pleaded internally. _At least then I won't be washing dishes or scraping the grill at the restaurant._

"Eureka!" Mr. Frond exclaimed. "I know what will be good for both of you. Teacher's. Aide."

"Um, excuse me?"

"Yes, it's perfect. The two of you need to learn to get along. What better way than to put you two together alone for 45 minutes during his office hours at the end of the day? You'll get to see how much work is involved in being a teacher and respect him more for it while helping grade papers and run errands. He'll be stuck with you every day and that will teach him a lesson for bullying you."

 _Did he just say spending time with me is a punishment?_

A bell rang out over the intercom, signaling that homeroom was over and Louise had her first real class of the day.

"Go to your next class, Louise. I'll deal with getting your schedule changed to reflect your new responsibility."

Louise trudged out of the office and into the bustling halls. Rudy was waiting on her by the door.

"That's got to be some kind of record," he joked at her. "Detention and the principal's office before the end of the first class of the year. And I thought I liked taking things fast."

"Yea, yea, Rudy. You don't need to remind everybody that you're a big track star in high school. What is this, some exposition about how you've changed since you were asthmatic in elementary school? Geez! Besides, I didn't get detention. I got something worse."

"Double detention?"

"No, I'm Mr. Bush's teacher's aide."

"What?! I thought you had be really responsible and trustworthy to get one of those jobs."

"Not if it's a punishment, apparently," Louise lamented. "And not if Mr. Frond thinks it's a creative problem solving technique. He's the new principal, by the way. Get ready to relive that experience all over again."

The rest of the day came and went without incident. Math, English, Chemistry, and Art all were surprisingly dull. Some of her classmates gave her strange looks, but most of them had become accustomed to the trouble maker that was Louise Belcher. It wasn't until a counselor came by in Art with her updated schedule that her stomach really churned. That block at end of the day that read _Teacher's Aide – Mr. Bush_ really made her nauseous. She had been sentenced to spend every other day with him for the rest of the school year. She knew there was a lesson somewhere in the situation about keeping your mouth shut and respecting teachers, but it was just as likely that the lesson was Logan and Mr. Frond are stupid.


	3. Chapter 3

Louise reluctantly opened her eyes as the alarm rung out from her nightstand. It was the third day of school and while the second day had gone pretty smoothly, this was going to be her first day as Logan's teacher's aide. 45 minutes trapped in the classroom with that jerk before she could go home.

"You've barely touched your eggs, sweetie? What's wrong? Still upset because of Gene?" Linda did her best to comfort her daughter.

"No, I've just got to go and be a stupid assistant for that stupid Logan," Louise replied with her hand resting on her chin as she pushed the scrambled eggs back and forth across the plate.

Bob made his way into the kitchen to sit. "You should probably stop calling him by his first name. Call him Mister…Whatever his last name is," her father suggested.

"Mr. Bush?" Louise said with a hint of ridicule.

"Mr. Bush? Are you serious?" Bob let himself laugh at the childish image the name conjured up. But he quickly pulled himself together to say, "Yes, you should probably call him…" Bob snorted as he tried to hold back more juvenile laughter. "Mr. Bush."

"Hey, our last name is Belcher," Linda reminded the two of them as she brought Bob his plate.

"Oh, yea," Bob realized sullenly.

"She's got us there, dad."

Louise was on time for the second day in a row, she realized as she sat in homeroom pretending to work on algebra. Logan was click, click, clicking was at his computer. She couldn't see the screen, but assumed that he wasn't actually doing any work. He was probably looking at porn or reading fanfiction. Or both. If Tina's browsing history was anything to go off of, most of the time the fanfiction was porn. Louise cringed at the memory of coming across an Equestranauts story with way too much horse spanking.

Being on time to class wasn't as hard as she had made it out to be. Heck, she could have had a nice seat at the back of the class if she had started the habit two days ago. The only reason she had decided to start arriving on time was to minimize having to hear Logan talk at her. And it was working so far. Even if she was stuck at the front row looking at his dumb face, she still didn't have to interact with him.

Logan turned to see Louise drawing spirals on her paper as she zoned out in his direction. "Ahem!" He made a fake cough to clear his unobstructed throat. Louise was suddenly aware that she was being watched. Logan pointed down at his desk to indicate that she should be doing her work. Which was fine, Louise decided. Why would she want to stare at his blond mug anyway?

The day went almost too quickly. School sucked, sure, but the longer it dragged on, the longer it would take to reach that dreaded final period of the day. Rudy reminded her during both classes they had together and once during lunch that he had the first cross country race of the season on Saturday and that she could come cheer him on, but only if she wanted to. Chemistry distracted her momentarily with the opportunity to make some fire on the Bunsen burner. She volunteered to light every group's flame for them. The _WHOOSH_ of blue fire was exhilarating, but then the rest of the class just consisted of waiting for water to evaporate. _I mean, c'mon, I can boil water at home._

Eventually the hour arrived. She drudged into the room with her backpack slung over one shoulder. "You know," she began, "I could just go home early and we could both save ourselves a lot of trouble. It's a win-win. You don't have to put up with me, I don't have to pretend like you're some kind of authority figure with pretty boy hair. Everybody goes home happy."

"No, I think this is going to be good for us," he said, shooting down a perfectly good idea that would have fixed her day. "Do you know why I decided to become a teacher?"

"I have a feeling you're gonna tell me whether I care or not," she shrugged sitting down at her homeroom desk.

"I became a teacher," he began, rising from his desk, "For lots of reasons. I wanted to help students, like me, who got ignored by all the teachers because we were slackers. I wanted to stick up for students, like me, who got pushed around by the teachers in school." As he walked around his desk to approach her, Louise felt much smaller and that was saying something for the shorter than average girl.

"That's what I said during my job interview anyway." There was a sudden change in his voice. The calmness he had originally projected in their first few confrontations was gone and it was replaced by something more eerie as he placed both palms on her desk and leaned in until he was almost nose-to-nose. "What I really wanted is respect."

"Um, excuse me?"

"I spent 12 years in school getting pushed around by teachers and my parents and every other grown-up and I got so sick of it. But now I'm the grown-up. I'm 23 freakin years old, Louise. And you and all your friends have to listen to every word I say. But guess what? You blew that for me the first day of class with your little hissy fit. I can tell all your classmates think I'm a pushover and it's all because of you!"

His face was really, REALLY close to hers now. _Those are some blue eyes,_ she thought to herself

"Are you sure they don't respect you because maybe, I dunno, you're a loser that NOBODY respects!" The smirk on her face told him how happy she was with herself for the remark. It cut into him. The details of their first meeting had faded, but the feeling was still there. Oh, how nice would it be to swipe that black cap off her head right now like he'd done with her rabbit ears. He couldn't, he knew. The school system was so sensitive that she could call it assault and they'd believe it. He couldn't let himself be fired the first week.

"Now, you're gonna take this stack of papers and this answer key and you're gonna grade all of it." He pulled a stack of papers from his desk and plopped it down on hers.

The pile looked intimidating but there were only three questions to grade on each sheet, so the pile began dwindling quickly.

Somewhere in the middle of the pile, Mr. Frond came to the door to check on his little arrangement. When Logan stepped outside to talk privately, Louise knew she had to take advantage of the moment. She flew forward to investigate the teacher's desk. Logan had left the computer unlocked, she noticed right away and seized the opportunity.

"Sex," she typed in the search bar and clicked enter. "Boobs," she mouthed to herself again as she typed the words and clicked search. Over and over she searched for explicit terms that she knew would send an alert to somebody at the school. Her freshman year had seen Louise punished for a similar offense with the school's computers. A teacher, though? Would he get fired? Maybe. Definitely worth trying. After a half dozen of these searches she decided she was risking her plan's success by sticking around too long.

Gracefully, she dashed to her seat and picked up where she left off. Logan returned unaware of the trap she had set in motion.


	4. Chapter 4

"Hmm…" Louise contemplated at the blackboard behind the counter. The burger of the day wasn't going to name itself. Her dad had made a new recipe and it included caramelized onions and bourbon sauce. Obviously, it needed to have something to do with New Orleans. The "Big Cheesy Burger?" No, there wasn't any cheese on the burger, so that would be stupid. The "Mardi Grab Burger Before It's Gone" No, the "Gras" in "Mardi Gras" didn't rhyme with "grab."

"You still struggling over there, Louise?" Bob exited the kitchen and walked up beside her.

"I'll get it eventually," she assured him.

"Okay, but if you want a suggestion-"

"No!" she cut him off. "If I'm gonna run this place someday I need to be able to do this. It's like the most important part of running the restaurant."

Bob chuckled at her, "I mean, it's up there, but making good burgers is probably number one."

"And being able to yell across the street at Jimmy Pesto, am I right? But that won't even matter if Jimmy Junior doesn't step up his game. Like, I can't give any comebacks if he doesn't yell something first. Do you think I'm gonna have to be the Jimmy Pesto and he'll be the you of our rivalry?"

"Or you could just be friends. Jimmy Junior is a nice kid. Even if he is kind of annoying when he keeps asking about Tina after they broke up like 3 years ago."

"Pathetic. I hope I never end up like that," Louise said, imagining how desperate some people could be.

"You'll probably get your heart broken a few times," Bob advised, upset at the thought of his children experiencing any kind of heartache. "But you know what? You'll learn from those experiences and you'll be better for them. And someday you'll meet somebody like I met your mom and you'll be happy with him."

"What makes you think it'll be a him?" Louise teased at Bob.

"That person, then." Bob corrected himself. Louise took note of his reaction and decided it was like her dad to be that accepting. For Christ's sake, she was pretty sure he had a crush on Marshmallow, though he'd never admit it. Or maybe that was just her imagination looking for ways to make her parents more interesting. Before she knew it, she'd be writing friendfiction or something if she wasn't careful.

The door open with a ring and Mort came in for his lunch after slaving away over corpses all morning. God, that made him sound way cooler than he ever could be. Bob quickly snatched a piece of chalk from his daughter's hand and began scratching out words on the blackboard.

Jazz Up Your Lunch Burger

"Really?" Louise said doubtfully.

"If you don't like it, you should have come up with something before the first customer came in," Bob told her.

Mort sat down and ordered his boring regular cheeseburger, ignoring the genius her father had spent the morning formulating. When she owned the restaurant customers were going to eat what she told them. No way would her efforts be wasted. She was an artiste!

The Saturday crowd was good and her V neck t-shirt made the tips roll in when she strategically leaned over the customers' tables in the right way. It was a little demeaning, sure, but it wasn't her fault that men were stupid. And it wasn't like she flirted or anything; she just happened to be pretty and that wasn't her fault.

Yep, everything seemed to be going well throughout the day. That is until around thirty minutes til closing. At 8:15, her father and mother both said they were going upstairs to relax and that their backs were killing them. Louise cringed at the thought of the two of them bumping uglies in bed. She knew that's what was going on. They had practically sprinted out of the restaurant!

Then, at 8:30, HE came in. Blond and tall. And stupid. She hadn't heard the bell from the freezer in the basement, where she was skimming over the dates on the beef, looking for the oldest to set out to thaw for the next day's food. After she had put the beef in the fridge to thaw, she went to the grill to begin cleaning. That's when she noticed him from the window.

"Get out!" What an instinct. Good.

"What? I'm not allowed to eat here?" Logan leaned on the counter and put an elbow up so he could rest his chin in his hand and look at her with a stupid smirk. "I'm a customer and you have to serve me."

"Shows how much you know! This restaurant practically belongs to me! And I can refuse service to any jackass I want!"

"You sure about that? Because my parents have really good lawyers and I'm sure they could find all sorts of ways to make this crappy rat trap shut down."

He was bluffing, right? Of course he was. He was a jerk and he just wanted to get under her skin. Then again, his parents were like the epitome of white yuppies and probably could do something like sue the restaurant just to harass her family. Would they remember how she had a biker gang threaten them? That was probably the kind of thing people held a grudge over, she realized.

"What do you want to eat, assface?" Louise decided to just cook him the burger, spit in it, and get him out as quickly as possible. Her feet her from standing all day and she just wanted to get to her room and collapse.

"Is that how you talk to customers? No wonder this place looks like it doesn't make any money. I'll tell you what, Louise," he reached into his back pocket and opened his wallet. "I just got my first paycheck for my first job out of college. And I'm feeling good. I don't know why I decided to come here and screw with you, but for some reason that's what I wanted to do today. So, let me make you an offer." He pulled a green bill from the wallet. "If you do a stellar job of serving me I'll give you one hundred dollars."

Holy crap! That sounded amazing. Was it worth it, though? No. Yes. Definitely not. Hell yes! Not in a million years. But a hundred bucks for making a burger and pretending to be nice to Logan. Was it more demeaning than showing a bit of cleavage. Yes. Yes, it was, she though decisively. Would she suck it up? Yes, to that, too. Because owning a restaurant was a customer service job and this would be great practice. Thinking of it that way, helped a little.

"How may I help you today, sir?" Louise walked to the cash register. "Here at Bob's Burgers we pride ourselves in customer service. We'll service the crap of you."

"The burger of the day looks good," he said to her. I'll have that.

At 8:40 she walked out again to deliver the sweet, tangy burger Bob had envisioned the night before. And she finally got to make it after a long day of visionless plebes passing it up. Even if it was Logan, her Dad's work was still going to be appreciated by somebody.

"You know what?" Logan pushed the plate away from him. "I don't think I want this burger. What about this one?" He pointed to a menu on the counter.

"That?" Louise responded bitterly. "I just spent 10 minutes on a perfectly good burger. You're gonna eat it and then you're gonna get on your phone and write the best damn review for this place ever."

"Louise, Louise, Louise. That's not how customer service works. Remember, the customer is always right." He flashed her the hundred dollar bill. "So, if you want this, you need to go back and make me a new burger."

Not worth it, she thought. Even if he did give her the money like he promised, it still wasn't worth it. And at this point, she wasn't sure he'd actually do it.

"No. I know what's happening here," she confronted him. They were eye to eye, amazingly. Him sitting on the bar stool made him level with her standing. "I'm going to just go back there and make another burger and you'll do something else to not eat it. Maybe you'll drop it on the floor. I DON'T KNOW! But then you'll tell me to go make something else. Because you're just here to mess with me. I'm wise to you, Logan."

"What if that is my plan? Don't you still want this money?" Logan waved the bill at her.

"Screw you, Logan. I have to play your games all week long. This is my house. So get out!"

"The door says you close at 9. I'm not going anywhere! I am going to sit here for the next 20 minutes and you're going to deal with me." Then, he picked up a handful of fries from the plate she had served him. He spun his chair around so his back was to the counter. He stretched out his arm and looked back at her with a cocky grin. Then, he dropped them. "Oops!"

"What is your fricken problem?" She stomped to the kitchen and grabbed a broom and dust pan. She marched back out and to the dining area. "Is this what you want to see me do? Huh!" She began sweeping the fries up. Logan sat with his back to the counter and leered at her as she swept. When she was finally done, he reached for the plate again and had another handful of fries. Louise saw the action. She looked at him in disbelief. She should have anticipated this, but everything he did made her lose her mind. She wasn't clear headed at all.

And drop. More fries were scattered in front of the two of them.

Louise's face was red with rage. She was two seconds from lunging at him and gouging out his eyes. It was over. Who cared if she went to jail. She was going to murder this slimy son of a…

"Here you go, Louise," Logan interrupted the seething rage within her to offer her the hundred dollar bill. "I really just wanted to get back at you for searching for all that porn on my computer last week. I got called into the office yesterday and it took like two seconds to figure out it was you. But don't worry. I didn't rat you out or anything. They gave me a slap on the wrist and told me not to do it again."

Stunned, Louise stared at him. Screw him and screw his perfectly white teeth with that stupid smile of his.

"I shouldn't give you the money because I was just here to mess with you, but then I'd be a liar. And Logan Bush is not a liar."

She snatched up the bill before he could change his mind and screw with her head anymore and then he got up and left without any more words between them.


	5. Chapter 5

The second hand of the clock ticked up above the blackboard. _Tick! Tock! Tick! Tock!_

Louise sat in her desk at the front row in the almost empty classroom grading papers silently. Logan was at his desk typing up some worksheet that she'd eventually grade for him. They hadn't said much since he had come into the restaurant over the weekend. She was pissed at him for jerking her around, but it was kind of a relief, too, she had realized. There was something gratifying about each time he pushed her to the edge and she exploded at him. It was clearly not healthy, but that didn't make it any less a thing.

She had the crumpled up hundred dollar bill in her front pocket still. She had scratched out a list of possible things to buy with it, but nothing seemed interesting enough to have to get rid of the piece of paper.

 _What the heck, Louise! You're being really weird right now._

Every few minutes she'd peek up and see what Logan was doing at the computer and nothing ever changed. She didn't know what she was expecting to see. Maybe nothing. Maybe just Logan.

 _Tick! Tock!_

For some reason, she felt like wearing her bunny ears that day. They were worn out, fraying at the edges and half eaten by moths. The ears didn't stand up anymore and leaned back. It just felt like the thing to wear that day.

Every once in a while, she could swear she saw him turn his head to her out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked up he had turned back to his screen. Finally, being unable to stand it anymore, she broke the silence.

"What was college like? Cuz, y'know, Tina and Gene are going, but I'm not really sold on the idea. I mean, is it even worth it when I just plan on running the restaurant someday? Ya hear what I'm saying, Logan?"

Logan looked up at her a little confused and caught off guard, as if he heard her speak but hadn't registered everything she said.

"College was okay, I guess. My parent mostly forced me to go. There was a lot of drinking and classes were way harder than high school. Like, you know how any idiot can graduate high school? Well, in college, the teachers don't give a crap if you pass or not. I don't know that you can handle it, Louise."

Insulted by the lack of confidence in her, she set her red pen down and narrowed in on him, "I'm sure you think you know me. I may not get straight A's or anything, but I can take care of business. I mean, you trust me to grade all these papers."

Logan turns completely to face her, studying her carefully. He was tempted to tell her that he re-graded all the papers every night because he didn't trust her, but then he remembered that after two weeks he hadn't found any mistakes in her work yet. She was doing her job and she wasn't making any mistakes. And she had been alone in the restaurant over the weekend doing all the work herself. It's not as if he had caught her slacking off when he entered. These newly realized facts made him tweak his opinions of the girl in a new direction.

 _Tick! Tock!_

"You could do college, if you wanted to," Logan reassured Louise. "If you are really set on running a restaurant, you could major in business. But you should be open to trying new things. I didn't plan on majoring in math when I started. I sucked in high school. But it kind of clicked when I took a class in college and I fell in love with it."

"PFFT! You fell in _love_ with math!" It was just too embarrassing to hear him say it like that. She would get over her fit of laughter in a few moments, but never in a million years as a nine-year-old would she have imagined Logan talking like that.

"Very funny, Louise. But while you're still flipping burgers 20 years from now, I'll be principal of this school and I'll be giving your 4 kids, from 3 different dads, detention."

"As if," Louise rolled her eyes at both the thought of Logan being anybody's boss and her having any little brat Belchers. "If I did have kids, they'd be so freakin amazing that you couldn't bring yourself to give them detention. I mean, anything that comes out of here," she made a gesture to her pants with one leg raised, "Would be a gift to mankind."

Logan suddenly looked uncomfortable. The steam kind of went out of him. For a few seconds, Louise didn't catch why the banter had fizzled out, but she quickly realized he was staring at where her hands were pointing.

"Be right back," Louise snatched the bathroom pass off the edge of the desk and marched out stiffly.

In the bathroom mirror, she pulled at her pigtails. _How could he be so gross! Logan is supposed to be better than the teenage boys at this school. Did he really just embarrass her staring like that?_

Why on earth she thought he would be better than them, she had no idea. The high school boys liked to make comments about her body or call her a slut when she wouldn't date them and it was some of the stupidest reasoning she had ever heard. The school saw her as a bad girl that had piercings and got in trouble and occasionally brought blueberries in her lunch, but everybody knew what was at the bottom of the container. For whatever reason, they had decided she was loose with her morals. Not that she was prude. She'd had her fair share of experiences as a teenager with hormones, but not anymore than the other girls in her grade. Actually, way less if rumors she'd heard were true. But her looks and her attitude gave her a reputation and now boys thought they could just walk up to her and ask for any kind of disgusting favors they saw online.

Logan, though, was supposed to be above that kind of thing. Was it because he was a teacher? _Sort of, I guess. But I don't really think of him as a real teacher._ Then, what was it?

 _Because he's just Logan. I want him to be better than them. He shouldn't get caught staring at my crotch like that because I want him to be better than those jerks I hate._

She didn't hate him, in that case, she realized. If she didn't hate him, then how did she feel about him? Was it…

 _No._

 _NO._

 _ **NO!**_

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

The scream could be heard throughout the school.


	6. Chapter 6

Louise paced back and forth across her bedroom clutching the cellphone in her hand to the point she thought she crush it.

 _I don't need to call. I don't need to say it out loud. I'll just keep it bottled up inside and repress it until I'm 40._

A horrible thought crossed her mind then. What if that's how Aunt Gales are created? No, by all accounts, Aunt Gale had always been sad and pathetic. It was still probably not a good idea to keep all these complex emotions to herself. For Christ's sake, her first crush led her to stow away in a dirty hamper of boys' underwear once. Crap! He was blond, too. Was there a pattern here?

She could always break into Logan's house, too. Yep, that way she could just stay close to him all day and he would never know it. If she were going to follow the same pattern with Boo Boo, that was. Not crazy at all. Totally healthy. No need to make that phone call and talk about it.

"I should probably just get this over with," Louise said aloud. A few taps and a dial tone was audible. "Don't pick up. Don't pick up," she prayed.

"Hello?" The voice was not Logan's.

"Hey, Tina! How ya been, big sis? Just calling to check up on you."

"I'm doing fine, I guess." The monotone voice might make others concerned that she was not fine, but since Tina always sounded like that who the hell could be sure. Louise wasn't concerned with the response anyway. This phone call was about her.

"Great, great…" Louise trailed off, uncertain of how to bring up the topic.

"Is everything okay, Louise? You've never called me before, so I'm starting to think everything is not okay. Are mom and dad okay? Oh my god, they're not are they? What happened?" Tina was losing it. The Aunt Gale thing was definitely just genetic because Tina always talked about her boy feelings and she was still a mess. Maybe repression wasn't a bad choice after all.

"Calm down, Tina. Mom and dad are fine, I promise. I'm calling because…" It was too embarrassing. But she wanted to say it out loud. It was like a pot with a lid on it, but something in the pot was bubbling and the lid wanted to explode off, but she was pushing down to keep the contents within the pot.

"Tina," Louise finally found her voice, "I need your advice. It's about a boy."

"Oh," the request took Tina by surprise. Louise had never come to her for any sort of guidance before. But if anybody could get Louise on the right track, it was Tina Belcher, expert on all things sausage. "Shoot, sister. I'm all ears. Not like a person made of ears. Just that I'm listening. You get what I mean. I'll just be quiet and listen now."

Eye roll by Louise.

"Well, there's this boy. And he's older. Like not in school anymore older. That's the first thing."

"I see," Tina was certainly nodding on the other end of the phone by the way she delivered that line.

"I'm sixteen, though. I'm gonna be eighteen in a year and a half. It'd be totally cool for me to marry some 90 year old guy just because I can vote, but our parents would freak over, like, a 21 year old or whatever."

"Older men are hot," Tina said, unhelpfully. "Are you dating him yet?"

"NO!" That was still too radical of an idea for Louise to pretend to be okay with. "I don't even think he likes me. Well, I mean, he might. Maybe. Probably not." It wasn't too crazy of an idea, though, Louise reflected. How much unnecessary attention did he give her? Why come to the restaurant alone to celebrate his first paycheck? And then give her like a big chunk of it!

"Well, you should definitely find out if he does. And if he's only 21 then mom and dad will probably be okay with it. What does he look like?"

"Blond hair, blue eyes, tall, perfect stupid teeth and perfect stupid body." _Dammit, Louise!_ That was not how she wanted that to come out. What was she supposed to say? She wasn't lying. Maybe she should just tell Tina. She'd been dancing around it since the beginning of the phone call. That would be even more embarrassing. What would she say? Thank God Louise couldn't see her face. "It's Logan," Louise finally said, relieving the weight on her chest.

"Who?" That was even more frustrating to Louise. Tina didn't realize who she was talking about.

"Logan," Louise repeated. "That dumb high schooler who used to pick on us. He stole my bunny ears that one time. He's a teacher now and I have to see his slappable face every day and it's driving me insane."

"No way," Tina was shocked. Maybe. Not very clear from her voice.

"Yea, I know, right? So what do I do? You're the expert on all things boy."

"Hmm…" The response was unproductive. "Hmmmmmmm…" Again. "Hmmmmmmmmmmmm…"

"C'mon!" Louise held out the phone and screamed at it.

"He's your teacher?" Tina asked, a plan forming in her mind.

"Yes," Louise confirmed.

"This could be risky. One: if you tell him and he doesn't like you, you're stuck with him and that's awk-ward, sister. Two: if you two do get together he could get fired if anybody finds out. This is the kind of stuff romances are made of, Louise. We have to do it."

What was this "we" stuff? All of a sudden, Tina was treating this like some personal soap opera.

"I don't care about romance crap. I am just going insane having to see him every day and not saying something. I want to scream and I want to slap him and I want to kiss him, then I want to slap him again. Just help me figure this out."

"Okay," Tina said decisively. "I have a plan. First you have to find out if he likes you. The best way to do that is to see how he reacts when he sees you with another boy. You have to see if he gets jealous."

This sounded needlessly complicated and might cause more trouble than it was worth. There weren't a lot of other qualified people that Louise was comfortable telling about this, so Tina's advice won by default.


	7. Chapter 7

The cafeteria was full of chatter as Louise's peers yapped on about their classes and their sports and their part-time jobs and their fake high school drama. Now, Louise's high school drama, that was real, she told herself with her chin propped up on one hand pushing instant mashed potatoes around the tray.

She scanned the room, looking at the prospective boys she had to choose from. She wouldn't be caught dead with any of the jocks. All that testosterone and being full of themselves. _You throw a ball around. Whoopty doo!_ _Stop pretending like group showers after the game isn't the reason you signed up._ The goth/punk-ish kids could be a good fit. At least they were interesting. They had their own problems. _"Oh! I'm so misunderstood! No teenage boy has ever been as mistreated as me._

Laughter erupted from a table behind her. Louise turned to see Rudy and Chloe Barbash flirting. That bitch! Rudy wasn't good enough for her when he was a sweet, friendly little boy, but now that he could run laps around all the other boys in the state and had all those gold medals, all of a sudden she couldn't keep her grabby hands off him. If Louise dated him, she could be honest with him about it all being fake, but it would still keep that bitch off of him while they pretended to be together. What if Rudy secretly had a crush on her, though? Louise didn't believe it was possible. They were best buds and nothing more, right? But what if? It would be heartbreaking to do that to him.

It was a good idea to use somebody that she didn't have to lie to, she concluded. But if not Rudy, then who?

"Can we sit here?" A nasally voice asked. It was Andy. Or Ollie. No, Andy, she decided. He was to her right.

"We always like sitting with you, Louise." Ollie said from her other side.

Without waiting for her response, they sad down to either side of her. Lately the twins had decided they liked symmetry. If both of them were on one side of a person it might throw off the room and send they got dizzy because they imagined the room spiraling out of control. Every class they were in had them sitting on opposite sides. They would hate that kind of separation as kids, but Louise suspected their creepy twin telepathy probably kept them in tethered to each other. Sometimes she pricked one with a needle to see if the other reacted, but so far she had gotten mixed results.

"We saw Mr. Bush go to your restaurant last week," Ollie screeched in one ear.

"I didn't even know teachers could leave school," Andy added. "Did he get escape?"

"Did you get him back in? Is that why you're always with him?" Ollie asked.

"Guys, guys!" Louise needed desperately to shut them up. "I'm not always _with_ him. I just grade papers and run errands for him every other day. It's totally normal, teacher's aide stuff."

"Then why did he come see you outside of school?" Andy prodded.

"Remember that one time Mr. Frond dated your aunt? You were almost related to him. You sure do spend a lot of time with teachers, Louise." Ollie pointed out even more awkwardness in Louise's life.

As she sat between their conversation for lunch, the uncomfortable idea occurred. Dating one of the twins might be hell. But they might just leave her alone when Logan wasn't around as long as she told them what was up. She wouldn't have to lie to anybody (except Logan) and she'd be able to check if Logan got jealous. This did not seem like the best idea in the world, Louise admitted, but Tina had made it very clear that the quickest way for a boy to admit his feelings for you was for them to realize other boys might come along and take you off the market. Louise hadn't liked thinking of herself as an item for sale, but she couldn't argue with Tina's logic.

"Do you guys have girlfriends?" Louise interrupted whatever they had been spouting to each other from her left and right.

"You're funny, Louise," one of them commented, which was kind of sad, but Louise had known the answer before she asked the question.

"Would one of you like to pretend to be my boyfriend for the day?"

They stretched around her head to look at each other. It was a strained silence that made Louise regret proposing the idea more and more as each second ticked by.

"That would throw off our symmetry," Ollie informed her.

"Unless you have a twin, Louise," Andy chimed in.

"Ooh! Do you have a secret twin, Louise?"

"You're my friends and I like you, but you're terrible. You're both terrible." Louise struggled to continue with this awful plan. "What if we just do like we are right now? How's that? You can both be my boyfriend and everything will be completely symmetrical. Does that work?"

The boys agreed to her request and they were officially pretending to date until the end of the day. Even sooner than that, Louise hoped. As the bell rang for class the three exited the cafeteria and dodged hallway traffic, snaking their way through the school to Logan's classroom. From her position around the corner, Louise could see Logan outside his door. He leaned against the wall, looking at his phone, not really monitoring the students.

"Okay," Louise turned to the twins, "This is it. You know what to do. If you screw this up, I will cut you!"

"That sounds fun," Andy cheered.

"We didn't know you were into that," Ollie agreed.

 _Note to self: they're either creepier or kinkier than I thought._

"No, not in a sexy way. You're only pretending to be my boyfriends," she reminded them.

Go time!

The three advanced from behind the corner toward Logan. She firmly grasped each of their hands, going so far to lace fingers. The illusion was complete so long as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb kept their mouths shut.

"Hey, Mr. Bush," Louise stretched out his name to bring attention to the fact she wasn't just calling him Logan anymore. After all, they weren't that close. Calling him by his first name was too affectionate. Had to be cold and distant if she was going to make him jealous. Logan looked up from his phone to see the bunch holding hands in front of him while other students whizzed by in the hallway.

"What are you three doing?" he said with a raised eyebrow.

"Oh, you know, just going to class," Louise said, trying to fake nonchalance.

"And you're holding hands because…"

"This?" Louise lifted her right hand attached to Ollie's. "This is just what you do when you're going out with boys. Meet my new boyfriends, Andy and Ollie."

Logan looked at her suspiciously. "You're dating…both of them?"

"Of course. Twins are like the jackpot, am I right?" Andy had his head turned and was picking his nose while Andy just stared blankly at Logan.

"Riiiiight," Logan was sorely at a loss of words for what he was witnessing. Whatever new prank Louise had come up with, he didn't get it.

At that moment, the tardy bell rang and Logan gave a weak shrug. "I'd give you three a tardy slip if I wasn't so lazy. You'd better get to class before another teacher catches you. I'll see you this afternoon, Louise. And just like that, he turned around and walked into his classroom.

"Did it work?" Andy asked excitedly.

"Did what work," Ollie responded.

"No," Louise sighed. She shook her hands free and took a step forward before turning to the two of them. "I have some bad news, honeys. I think we should see other people."

One of them started sniffling. Then, the other. In a flash they were holding each other and babbling incoherently. Louise caught one line in the blubbering as one of them announced, "Our first break up!"


	8. Chapter 8

"We need volunteers to help set up the homecoming dance this Saturday. Any volunteers?" Logan scanned the homeroom class, stopping for a moment at Louise who was scribbling a list down that he couldn't quite make out. She wore a pink beanie with some pins and buttons attached to it. One of the buttons, he noticed, said _Whatever it is…I didn't do it!_ And that seemed to sum up Louise's behavior at school.

"Nobody?" Logan shrugged. "C'mon, guys! Mr. Frond is making me show up to help, so it'd really help me out if there were more people to make it go faster."

"HA!" Louise exclaimed mockingly at Logan. She might have admitted a crush on him, but Logan was still a jerk, crush or not, and he deserved his weekend to be ruined after all the misery she endured.

"Don't you want to show your school spirit, Louise?" He was really desperate for help if he thought he could talk Louise into doing free work.

"Um, no. How do I put this politely?" She brought her palms together in front of her face and then angled them so she was pointing at Logan. "Our school sucks. And homecoming is about the football team, who also all suck. And dances, in general, suck. One big suckfest. You get what I'm goin for here, Logan?"

"High school is kind of lame, Louise," Logan admitted. "But you only get to do it once. You can at least go to everything once to experience it. Then, you can say for sure it sucks." Wow, that wasn't completely stupid, Louise acknowledged to herself. "Unless the only reason you're staying home is because nobody is going to ask you to the dance anyway. At least if you come set up you can imagine what all the kids with friends will be doing at the dance. HA!"

And then the jerkwad practically skipped back to his desk, all proud of himself for his not-funny-at-all jab at her.

"Do you think he's right?" Louise asked Rudy later, at lunch, from across the table.

"You _are_ kind of a freak." The reply came from ginger-headed Chloe Barbash next to Rudy. She said it matter-of-factly, as if it were a fact of life. Like the sky was blue.

"I wasn't asking you," Louise snapped back.

"I mean, maybe you should try doing more social stuff," Rudy offered. "Ever since we got into junior high you keep making excuses not to hang out with people. You always say you have to help at your family's restaurant. And now nobody invites you to do anything because they all think you don't like them. Kind of like how when I was a kid, I always used my asthma as an excuse not to do anything."

"In your defense, Rudy, you almost died the first time we did anything cool together. Speaking of which, we should go trespassing again sometime."

"Don't get him in trouble!" Chloe scolded. "He's on his way to a track scholarship and you're going to ruin it for him if you drag him down to your level."

It was really upsetting that Rudy wasn't standing up for her at that moment. He was kind of the only friend she had, if you didn't count her now ex-boyfriends. She was trying to let Chloe slide, but it was taking a lot of energy to ignore her constant insults.

"Maybe I should go to the dance," Louise played with the idea. "I don't have a date, though."

"Nuh-uh!" Chloe erupted. "Don't even think about it. Rudy is already my homecoming date." She leaned over and latched onto his arm. Rudy's face turned bright red.

"Wow, Chloe. I didn't even ask, but I guess that's one person I can cross off my list."

The rest of the day passed by in a daze as Louise contemplated whether she was really missing out on anything by skipping cliché high school events. Before she knew it, she was sitting back in Logan's classroom with a stack of papers, an answer key, and a red pen. When she came to Rudy's paper, she took off extra points. If Rudy noticed, she would just say that she must have misread those answers. Sure, accidentally taking off 25 percent was a little suspicious, but if she knew Rudy, he wouldn't try to argue it. Chloe's paper deserved 50 percent off, though, and Louise took extra time to erase the correct answers and imitate her handwriting to make fake responses.

She didn't need a date, Louise realized. That was really outdated thinking and she should have known it the moment Logan tried to make her feel bad about it. She could just go and have a fun time. Sure, she had pretty much isolated herself from all her classmates by being so confrontational and disruptive, but there would be freshmen there that didn't know her and that could work.

"Do you still need volunteers for Saturday?" Louise asked.

"Huh? Oh, sure. Only like five kids have signed up. Are you really going to come help, Louise? Or is this some prank? I got suspended for a week when I lit stinkbombs at one of my high school dances."

"Totally just want to help," Louise assured him. "You're right. It's probably gonna be a lame dance with lame people, but I should at least go make fun of it in person."

Logan eyed her suspiciously, trying to figure out her true intentions. Whatever she was planning, she'd probably do it regardless. If he could keep an eye on her on Saturday then he figured he could stop her from pulling whatever stunt she was thinking of.

"I need you to run this paperwork to the office," Logan said, stretching out his hand holding some papers.

"You're gonna get fat if you make me do all your walking for you," she teased. "What's next? Want me to chew your food for you, too?"

"Doubt I'll get fat. I go to the gym every day," And he flexed his bicep as if to prove it. The long sleeve dress shirt wasn't about to rip or anything, but Louise could make out the shape of his arm and she became very ashamed at the goosebumps she felt on her neck and arms staring at him. In a flash, she dashed out to snatch the papers and ran out the door to Logan yelling at her to walk.

On her way back from the office she deliberately walked slowly in the hopes that the bell would ring and she could just go home. Taking the long way, she passed by the football field and decided to gawk for a few minutes at the team who hadn't won a game all season preparing to lose their own homecoming game. A black track encircled the field and Louise noticed Rudy out there sprinting with a group of other scrawny boys. Rudy was way ahead of the other, of course, and on top of that, he made it look easy while the other guys struggled to catch their breath at the end of their sprint.

Drenched in sweat and gulping water from a bottle, Rudy spotted Louise watching. He jogged over to meet her. At first, she was excited to see him coming to greet her, but a split second later she remembered lunch with Chloe Bar-bitch and her excitement flickered out.

"Hey, Louise! What are you doing out here?" Rudy had no idea she was even angry with him.

"I was just leaving actually. All of a sudden it smells over here." She pinched her knows and waved her hand as though she were trying to disperse a bad smell.

"Oh, sorry about that. Being an athlete has its downsides," he gestured at his sweaty clothes sticking to his skin. "Anyway, I have a big favor to ask of you and I'm glad I caught you because I'm running out of time to ask."

He was going to try asking her a favor after letting his little girlfriend walk all over her today? Really?

"I'm sort of busy, so I don't really have time right now. Gotta get back to my job."

"It'll only take a minute," Rudy rushed to block her path. "You know how when we were in third grade and Chloe pretended to like me to get my quiz answers?"

"Yes…" Was Rudy finally coming to his senses about that girl? Good.

"And you know how I asked her to meet me after school on Valentine's Day and she didn't show up?"

"Mm-hmm…" Louise nodded, remembering that Rudy was actually her first kiss. That felt weird now, she thought. She had forgotten all about it.

"Well, this weekend she's expecting me to show up to her house in a suit and a corsage and take her to homecoming and they'll probably vote for us to be prince and princess since we're pretty popular in our grade."

"Mm-hmm!" This time it was more of a growl. He had ten seconds to make this go somewhere because if he didn't she was going to…

"I'm going to stand her up and make her feel as crummy as she made me feel!"

"What?" No, seriously, what did her just say? Was Rudy seriously talking about getting back at a girl for something that happened 8 years ago?

"She is so mean to everybody," Rudy continued. "Especially you. I was so mad when she called you a freak at lunch today and I wanted to tell her that I'd rather be friends with a freak like you than ever be her boyfriend, but I couldn't ruin my big plans."

"When did you get so dark, Rudy?" Louise could actually feel some tears welling up.

"Sometime after I met you," he credited Louise with his devilish new attitude. "But here's the thing," he continued. "After she realizes I stood her up, I want her to come to the dance and see me dancing with you as the big finale. It'll be the perfect end to make her realize she can't just be mean to everybody and get away with it."

Who needs a lot of friends when Louise had one best friend like this?


	9. Chapter 9

"Aww…My little Louise going to her first high school dance!" Linda Belcher seemed more excited than her daughter as she served their late Saturday morning breakfast.

"Well, I'd probably be more excited if I didn't volunteer to set up all afternoon," Louise commented. "I mean, other people are going to be like 'Ooh! Look at all the balloons!' while I'm over here like 'I had to fill all 500 of those balloons.'"

"Yea, Louise," Bob said, putting down his newspaper. "Why did you volunteer to help? You're not exactly the helpful type. Unless you're getting something out of it. Or going to ruin it in some way. Louise…please don't get in trouble today."

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa, dad!" Louise feigned heartbreak. "I can't believe you'd accuse me of being some kind of troublemaker."

"You _did_ fill all those water balloons with pee during that summer camp when you were twelve," Linda reminded her as she sat down to eat her pancakes. "They said the smell didn't come off those poor kids for a week. Where'd you even get that much pee?"

"I challenged Gene to a water drinking contest. And can that boy drink when he wants to." Louise smiled remembering how much fun getting the two of them kicked out of that camp had been. She wouldn't reveal to her parents that the two had both actually been homesick and were trying to get kicked out to come back home. She had to pretend that working in the restaurant again was a punishment, but she was very proud of the new recipes she had invented over the next few weeks trapped at the grill.

"Anyway," Louise continued, "I only volunteered because Logan was being so pathetic and nobody else would do it. It's basically charity."

"That's so cute!" Her mother exclaimed at the revelation. "You just can't get enough of that boy, can you?"

"What!" Louise said, trying to sound shocked.

"What?" Bob asked in genuine confusion.

"You go ahead and enjoy your day with Logan," Linda continued, squeezing syrup over her pancakes. "Just don't get him in trouble."

" _Me_ get _him_ in trouble? He's the adult, Mom!" Louise had forgotten she was supposed to be denying any interest in Logan to her mom.

"Yea, but girls mature faster than boys," Linda said, repeating a stereotype that Louise hated, since it had always been used against her by women teachers to get her in more trouble than the boys in her grade for pulling the same stunts.

Louise had originally planned to take her skateboard to the school, but her mother insisted on giving her a ride, saying that she didn't want her daughter being anymore exhausted than she needed to be or she might not enjoy the dance later.

The car ride over was short, but exhausting all the same. Louise stared out the window, watching the blocks pass by and trying to think of a way out of everything she had committed to doing that day. She could just skip without telling anyone and come up with an excuse later. As much as she wanted to stick it to Chloe, there was still a whole stupid dance to show up to. And her mom had bought her a dress. Oh, God! What was she going to do about her hair. Louise always wore hats. Nobody had ever seen her full head. Then, there was this thing with Logan. She saw him five days a week already and she alternated between wanting to kiss him and kill him. Why did she offer herself up to take orders from him all day when she didn't have to? Wouldn't the day be better if she just stayed home playing videogames and stuffing her face with popcorn? Yes, yes it would.

Louise braced herself as she walked up to the gym doors where the dance would take place. The school was eerily quiet considering there should be dozens of students helping set up inside. Was she early? No. In fact, she was fifteen minutes late. Taking a deep breath, she pushed open the door.

The gym was deserted. There were rolls of streamers and paper for making banners and some folding tables still folded up. There was a helium tank for filling balloons and a stage at the far end that must have been set up the night before, but nothing on the stage set up for playing music. Wait. Over on the bleachers, Louise spotted a figure with their knees propped up on and face buried in their hands. Of course, the top of the head was blond.

"Logan!" Louise called out. Logan looked up. The look of misery on his face changed to excitement as he realized who it was.

"What took you so long?" he asked annoyedly as he got up to meet her.

"What? Did nobody else show up?"

"What do you think! Does it look like anybody showed up?" Logan was obviously upset. Were his eyes red? Had he been crying like a baby before she arrived? That was so pathetic that it should have made Louise lose all attraction she had for him, but for some sick reason it just made her want to comfort him.

"Looks like nobody wanted to see you on a weekend." That was the opposite of comforting, Louise knew as she was saying it. But it slipped out anyway.

"Apparently, you did!" he fired back at her. "Couldn't get enough of me during the week?" He was almost to her now, but they were still shouting. Like always.

Why did he say that? Did he know about her crush? Or was that just him being a self-centered jerk? She couldn't tell.

"As if!" Louise scoffed at the idea. "I'm just here because I'm a hard worker. Run a restaurant, set up a high school dance, whatever."

"If you're such a hard worker, why are you late?"

Louise scowled at him. She couldn't come up with an answer. She could blame her mother cooking breakfast so late, but he'd just tell her not to blame other people. Screw him. She didn't need an excuse. She was the only one to show up. If she left right now, he'd have to go back to feeling sorry for himself. He needed her.

He needed her. That was an interesting feeling.

"Like I said, I'm a hard worker," Louise insisted with her arms crossed. "Now, let's get this stupid dance put together."

"There's only two of us," Logan pointed out.

"So? I practically run my dad's restaurant by myself. This is just some balloons and streamers and garbage." It was true. They had all day to jazz the place up. Sure, if they had ten people it might be done in an hour or two, but Logan and Louise could still do it well before anybody started showing up for the dance.

Louise steadied ladders while Logan hung streamers. They painted banners in the school colors and Louise snuck some offensive drawings in that nobody would notice, but she could still laugh about to herself. The most boring part came when they needed to fill up all the balloons. So. Many. Balloons. They looked at the floorplan handed down by Mr. Frond and set tables up accordingly. Eventually, caterers started coming in and the band hauled in instruments, along with a DJ shortly after.

The pair sat together on a set of bleachers, exhausted.

"I can't believe we did it," Logan breathed a sigh of relief.

"I can't believe it looks good," replied Louise, taking in her work.

"I'm really glad you showed up," Logan turned to Louise. "This is my first big job they gave me at the school. I was in a really bad place this morning when none of the volunteers showed up. Thanks for being here."

She turned to tell him that it was no big deal, but she lost her voice as she made eye contact. The way he was staring at her was not at all in any way he had looked at her before. Was it just him being grateful? Seeing her in a new light as responsible? Was it something else? It was weird. She couldn't respond. No words came to her lips. Her body had frozen in place. Was she supposed to do something? Would he do something? Or was she just being hopeful?

The wooden seat buzzed, jerking them out of the awkward silence. A text from her mother that Louise's ride had arrived.

"So…hey, I have to go," Louise sputtered out uncomfortably.

"Okay," Logan sounded somewhat disappointed. "Try not to cause any trouble tonight, Louise!"

As she hurried to the exit, Louise thought to herself that it wouldn't be her causing anything. Chloe Barbash might make a scene, though. Too bad that warning Logan about that would ruin all the excitement later.


	10. Chapter 10

"I look like Tina," Louise groaned at her reflection in the long mirror. The blue, knee length dress had looked okay at the mall, but now she regretted it. It probably didn't matter what the dress looked like, honestly, because the idea of wearing a dress in general hadn't been her thing since she was nine. Sure, she felt girly sometimes, and wasn't opposed to even putting make-up on now and then, as long as dark and a little edgy. This, however, was girly in a different way than she preferred. It was frilly and princess-esque.

That might be Tina's thing – and maybe a little of Gene's thing – but it just wasn't for Louise. It was an hour before the dance and she wasn't going to find anything better. The idea of showing up in a suit sounded cool, just to mess with some of the older generation's sensibilities. Did she own a suit? No.

Too bad. That might have made an impression, Louise lamented. Well, she didn't look terrible in the dress, she admitted. And even if it wasn't her thing, it might be just the thing to get Logan's attention. But no way was she doing something ridiculous like wearing heels. She wasn't about to spend all night uncomfortable and maybe breaking an ankle. Her black Converse would be just fine. Who the hell was going to look at her feet anyway? Not when she had everything else looking great. In fact, maybe if she dazzled everybody with her outfit, she wouldn't be asked to dance. Gag!

Knit caps and bunny ears probably weren't what anybody wore to a dance. Nobody ever saw her with her head uncovered and that wasn't going to change for one stupid event she didn't really care about going to. Waiting until the day of to make these decisions hadn't been a great idea, but she had honestly been thinking of ways to back out of it all week. Finally, she put on a black beanie, but dug through some of Tina's storage boxes for girly charms to add to the cap, including some rainbow and unicorn pins. Maybe she could start a punk princess trend online if she had the energy to take the pictures.

Finally, Louise left her room exhausted and collapsed on the couch. The effort put into getting ready, added to her previous exhaustion from helping set up the event earlier in the day, had drained her of any tiny amount of motivation she had left to go. Rudy was counting on her, she knew. And ending ten years of dealing with Chloe's crap was worth it, too.

To no one's surprise, as soon as she let herself have any ounce of relief, the doorbell rang, letting her know Rudy had arrived. _He better have a car_ , she thought. _He might like running everywhere now, but if he asks me to just walk there, I'm gonna need an inhaler._

"Hi, Louise," Rudy said, grinning from ear to ear. "You look really pretty in that dress."

"Yea, yea," Louise rolled her eyes. "RUDY'S HERE!" she shouted up the staircase. "I'LL BE BACK BY NINE!"

Her mother came running to the stairs. "Oh, no you don't Miss Louise. You're not leaving without taking a picture on your big, special day. Oh, you look so adorable in your little suit, Rudy. Is that a corsage?" Louise saw the flower in his hand down at his side. It was pretty, but she didn't really want to go through the trouble of wearing it all night. And why was this starting to feel like a real date? Not cool.

Her mother set them up in the living room next to the window. It seemed to drag on forever. Rudy had his arm around her shoulder and that was definitely making it weird. It wasn't his fault. Her mom had encouraged them to scooch together and for him to put his arm around her. It clicked then that maybe her mom did think the two of them were going on a date for real. It was probably better than telling her the real reason they were going together.

Her dad stood in the background in his sweatpants and white t-shirt, probably waiting to be able to watch TV again. When the 19 identical pictures had all been taken, Louise tried to get going, but her mom stopped them again.

"Hold up, you two. We need to give you the talk before you go," her mom said, halting them.

"Oh, my god! Mom!" This was so embarrassing.

"I'm not saying that anything's going to happen," Linda rambled on. "But if it does, we want you to be smart about it. Okay, Louise?"

"We're leaving!" Louise grabbed Rudy by the arm and dragged him out at almost a sprint.

During the drive to the school, Rudy's phone buzzed a million times with text messages from Chloe asking if he was almost to her house yet. Louise texted back that he was on his way. She even included a little heart. Rudy looked a little uncomfortable as Louise laughed in the glow of the cellphone screen in the dark car.

The texts continued as they entered the school behind a line of other students. Louise decided that Rudy had to stop for gas and it would be a few minutes more. She told Chloe that popular girls should arrive late so everybody would be there to see them. Chloe's response: "ur so smart ;)" What was this, 2003? _You have a full keyboard. Write in complete sentences, woman!_

Louise was surprised at how much better the place looked with the lights turned down and various small lights dancing across the wall and ceiling and floors. If you can't see how crappy something is, you can imagine it's as nice as you want it to be. The music helped, too. It wasn't great music, but it still gave an atmosphere to trick students into thinking they were having a good time. Even Louise started feeling upbeat after a few minutes of wandering around the gym. She didn't have any friends there and didn't know many of the underclassmen, but it still made her feel like she was part of a group while she was standing among the chitchat awkwardly with Rudy standing beside her.

Rudy's phone started ringing from his pocket. Chloe was finally at the end of her patience and was calling now.

"What do I do?" Rudy began freaking out. "I didn't plan this far."

"Don't answer it," Louise advised. "Turn off your phone. Somebody will text her that you're here with me eventually. Then, she'll either stay at home and cry or come here and make a scene. Either way, you slayed the bitch-dragon, Chloe Barbash, and you're a hero to all the boys and girls she's put down since elementary school."

Rudy turned off his phone and put it away. "Since we're already here, would you like to dance, Louise?"

"I'll go out there and bust some moves, but as soon as the slow dancing crap starts I'm out of there."

"Fair enough," Rudy shrugged.

The dance floor was filled with teens bouncing up and down to the music the band was playing. Mr. Frond weaved through the crowd separating anybody that was making too much body contact. "No, no, no!" he scolded. "Ew!" he freaked out at two students grinding against each other. "Do you have any idea how many germs you can get from dancing like that?"

"Pretty sure those two will be swapping way more germs later," Louise shouted to Rudy over the noise.

This was fun, Louise admitted to herself. She wouldn't tell anybody else, except maybe Rudy when he dropped her off. Just because it was something she associated with her airheaded classmates didn't mean it was a bad thing. Thinking that something was terrible just because terrible people happened to like it was not a good way of doing things. _That's how you grow up to be a miserable old person who yells at other people having fun._

As Louise let herself enjoy the music, she grabbed Rudy by both hands and made him spin in circles with her. She began laughing without anything holding her back. All the stresses of school and the obsession with Logan and her job at the restaurant all melted away.

"RUDY!"

Until Chloe's voice came shrieking into her ears.

Rudy and Louise stopped to stare at Chloe. They had been together on this plan to humiliate Chloe for two days, but neither of them had put any thought into what they'd say to her when she confronted them. It's all fun and games until you're standing there with your mouth hanging open.

"What the hell, Rudy! How could you just leave me at home and come to the dance with _her_! Do you know how embarrassing this is? I thought we were together."

"Pssh!" Louise couldn't keep a straight face. "You barely even looked at Rudy before he won state last year. Except when you flirted with him to give you quiz answers in fourth grade. And when you tricked him into doing your science project in sixth grade. And when you sweet talked him into buying you all those clothes with money from his summer job. This is exactly what you deserve, Chloe!"

Louise had been dealing with her taking advantage of her best friend for years. Sure, Rudy was at fault, too. He knew she was using him and he had his own self-esteem problems, but that didn't make her less of a predator.

"You've been pretty mean to me, Chloe." Rudy backed up Louise.

"But I've changed," Chloe stomped her foot. "I really like you now."

"I agree with Louise. You didn't want to date me until I became a winner." Then, Rudy gestured to Louise. "But Louise always thought I was a winner!"

Without warning, he did it. Rudy pulled Louise toward him and before she knew it, his wet lips were pressed against her own. She felt powerless. She didn't want to kiss him, but she knew everybody was watching and if she didn't go along with it, she'd embarrass Rudy and their whole diabolical plan would crash and burn.

 _I can't believe I didn't realize he liked me. How did I miss all the signs. He's ruining everything._

Rudy finally pulled away after what felt like a lifetime.

"You're going to regret this," Chloe threatened. "I don't know when and I don't know how, but I'm going to destroy you, Belcher."

Louise watched Chloe march away to the exit. As her eyes followed Chloe, she locked eyes with Logan whom she hadn't seen the entire night. The look in his eyes said it all. He had seen the whole thing. There was this look of disbelief in his eyes. Was he disappointed in her for being so cruel? Not likely. He was ten times the jerk she'd ever be. Was he… _Jealous?_ He turned away from her and made his own way to the exit, behind Chloe.

"Ack!" Louise snapped back to Rudy who was gagging. "That was so gross! I'm so sorry, Louise."

"What the hell, Rudy? I give you tongue and this is the thanks I get?"

"I'm sorry. I didn't plan on kissing you. It just came to me. It seemed like such a good idea at the time." He was scraping his tongue with his fingernails.

"And here I was thinking you had a crush on me." She nudged him in the side with her elbow.

"What? No!" Rudy denied the very idea. "You're my bestfriend. That's just weird."


	11. Chapter 11

Louise willed herself to put one foot in front of the other as she made her way to school on the brisk October morning. Hoodie weather had finally arrived in full force and that normally would have excited her if not for the craziness surrounding her life at that moment. The hood covered her head and her hands were stuffed in the front pocket of the black hoodie.

Logan hadn't said much to her since the dance. A full week of the silent treatment. Tina said that was perfect. He must have a crush on her, too. Why did it feel so crummy, then? Picking on Logan was fun and entertaining, but this was completely different. This just felt mean. Her sister had failed to mention exactly what his jealousy could look like.

"But it did work," Tina had reassured her. "And now you know that he likes you. Now you can go for it. Do it, do it. You're living the fantasy of every girl who has ever had a crush on her teacher."

There was a line out the door as she approached her favorite coffee shop. Were they all there for pumpkin spice lattes? _That is so basic!_ Nevermind that Louise had made a tradition of having one before going out to egg Mr. Fishoeder's house every Halloween. _It has the word pumpkin in it. Halloween has pumpkins. It's called having a theme._ That's how Louise rationalized it in her head.

Louise approached the store front sullenly. Caffeine and sugar might be a good pick-me-up to make the day more bearable. Standing in that line stretched out the door and along the sidewalk was not worth the extra energy, though. She would feel like such a tool if she stood in line for 15 minutes for one coffee.

Staring at the sidewalk, she marched on past the herd on the sidewalk waiting for entry into HER café. Seriously, was Logan just not going to talk to her for the rest of high school? He had just been putting papers on her desk with the answer key. And one day last week, he had left a note on the closed door that told her to go home early. _This isn't how you said it would go, Tina._

"Hey, Louise!" Rudy greeted her as she shut her locker. "You haven't really been yourself lately. Is something wrong?"

"I'm fine, Rudy," she lied. Rudy followed her as she swerved through students on their way to class.

"You don't seem fine," Rudy pushed the subject. "You haven't really seemed fine since Homecoming. I apologized for the kissing thing. I told you it was just to upset Chloe."

"I'm not mad about that. It was annoying, but it's fine now. I just don't want to talk, okay?" She began speed walking. She took a left turn when her class was to the right because she knew Rudy's class was also to the right. But he went left anyway. This was none of his business and if he kept pushing her about it, she knew she would tell him eventually.

Rudy sped up to get close to her and leaned into her ear to whisper, "Is it a lady parts thing?"

That was too much. Louise laughed unexpectedly, spraying a little spit at the back of the student walking in front of her.

"It's called a period, Rudy. A big bloody, mucus-y, monstrous five days a month. And, no, I'm not on my period. I can pull my pants down right now and you can check my hooha, if you want."

Rudy stopped dead in his tracks with a terrified look on his face. Louise turned to see him stiffened up and cringing. And here Louise thought it was just a stereotype for boys to act like this when the subject came up. Hell, Gene went with their mom and her to pick up her first pads.

"Look at this brand," Gene had said in the store. "All the boxes have an outline of a woman doing some kind of sport. Do you think I'd get more exercise if I bought some?" _Man, the look on the cashier's face when he announced he was going to have the best period ever._

The tardy bell rang just then, making Rudy and Louise both late for their classes and pointed in the completely wrong direction.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?" Louise experienced a flashback to her childhood as she heard Logan's voice call out to her menacingly like that for the first time in years.

Louise turned to see him standing imposingly with his arms crossed in his oh-so-professional tie and slacks.

"Looks like I get to write my first detention for the day," Logan reached into his back pocket to pull out a small spiral notepad with detention slips.

"I can't get detention," Rudy gasped. "Coach will kill me if he finds out."

"Too bad, Forrest Gump!" Logan wasn't even trying to act like a real teacher anymore. Louise remembered him telling her in their first week together that he liked the feeling of power being a teacher gave him and now she was seeing him in action.

"Don't do that to Rudy," Louise stepped between Logan and her friend. "I'm the one who tricked him into walking the wrong way. If you're going to give anybody detention, it should be me and only me."

Logan studied her face carefully. Suspiciously.

"You know," Logan thought out loud, "If I told Principal Frond that I caught you two making out in the hallway, he would believe me." He started tapping his pen against the pad of detention slips. "I could say I caught you doing just about anything I want and nobody would argue with me."

"Okay, Logan! You made your point. You can screw us over. We get it. Just let us go, already!" Louise knew he was a jerk and she even liked that about him because, seriously, she just showed everybody what a jerk she could be to Chloe a week ago. But this was getting real. Logan was starting to worry her.

She couldn't let her fear show. Not to him. Not today.

"Look, Logan. I think I know what your problem is and you're going to really screw things up if you go through with this." It didn't matter what kind of stupid crush she had been going through, if he went through with this lie, she was one hundred percent done with him.

"Oh, you think you know what my problem is, huh? I don't think you do." The two of them were locked in a deadly staring contest.

"I think I do," Louise insisted. "And to prove it, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Rudy and I are just friends."

"I don't get it. What's going on here?" Rudy asked to anybody that would answer.

"Shut up, Rudy!" The command came from both Logan and Louise together.

"If you two aren't dating then why were you making out at the dance?" Logan demanded.

"To make somebody else jealous," Louise explained. "But I didn't know it was going to make someone else jealous." Logan broke eye contact. And was that some red in his cheeks?

 _Gotcha!_ Louise thought. _I knew it!_

"Just get to class. And hurry before I really do give you detention." Logan tucked the detention slips back in his pocket.

Louise grabbed Rudy and began dragging him past Logan and to their classrooms down the hall, but before she got too far past Logan she said, "By the way, I'm closing by myself again tonight, if you get hungry."

Logan watched the two of them rush off, stunned.


	12. Chapter 12

Of course, the restaurant would be busy that day. It was never busy. Why would it be busy on that one day Louise needed it to be dead?

"This is pretty crazy, huh?" Her dad said pushing a plate full of food through the kitchen window. "You might not have to close alone after all."

"Great." Louise gritted her teeth as she picked up the plate and walked out to the tables. _Just frickin great._

She only had a few hours to decide what she was going to say when he got there. Louise liked to live on the edge. She had taken a chance and rolled the dice and against all odds the past six weeks was about to come to a climax. Too bad that Louise hadn't thought about what would happen if she did get Logan to admit he liked her.

The entire thing felt like a silly game at the beginning when Tina suggested making Logan jealous. Now it was real and she didn't have any idea what to say to him when he came in. _Oh, hey, I half hate your guts but I half can't stop thinking about what you'd look like naked._ It could have been worse, she knew. At least the alternating class schedule at the school had resulted in her not being his teacher's aide that afternoon. The was still plenty of time left for customers to leave and for Louise to figure out what she'd do if Logan actually showed.

As if the forces of the universe were against her that day, customer after customer walked through the door asking for burgers. It felt like she had barely cleared the dishes from one table when another set of customers would sit down in the booth. As she took orders, her eyes were constantly darting to the street to scan for Logan. It got so bad that at one point she completely missed an entire order and had to ask the customers to repeat themselves.

It didn't last all evening, even if that's what it felt like. The restaurant was empty and the sun had set completely, leaving the outside dark with the exception of the glowing streetlights and some light coming from Jimmy Pesto's.

"Alright, alright. You can leave already. I'll sweep the back, I promise!" Louise was badgering her father from the front while he held a broom behind the grill.

"What's your deal, Louise?" Her dad asked suspiciously. "Why do you want me gone so bad?"

"No reason, okay. I just don't think you should be pushing yourself so hard at your age. Leave the restauranting to the young people. Go get some rest." _Just frickin leave._ A bell rang. Another customer was walking through the door.

 _Don't be him. Don't be him. Don't be him_

"Logan. What a surprise seeing you come in here." Louise frantically nudged her head in the direction of the kitchen window.

"Oh, god." Bob poked his head through the window and spotted Logan. "I knew something was weird."

"Hi, Mr. Belcher," Logan waves awkwardly. "I was just in the neighborhood and I thought I'd say hi to Louise."

"Sure," Bob said, clearly not believing Logan's story. "Just make sure you turn everything off and if any real customers come in, do your job. And if you're not going to do your job, call me down. " He pulled off his apron and walked out to the dining area, making Logan uncomfortable as he passed.

"Nice seeing you again, Mr. Belcher," Logan rambled out, feeling himself start to sweat.

"Good to see you, too, Logan." Bob replied, exiting out the front door.

So, there they were. Logan stood in the dining area with his arms hanging uselessly at his sides and Louise staring back from behind the counter. The silence only lasted for a few seconds, but it felt as if it dragged on for minutes.

"So…"

"Yea…"

"Um…"

"You really aren't going out with Rudy, huh?" Logan struggled to maintain eye contact as he asked it.

"Are you kidding me? He's like my best friend. He kissed me to make Chloe mad because she's, like, the worst." It was starting to sound meaner every time she explained it. Louise hated Chloe, sure, but when she tried to justify it to others, it didn't make her seem like the good guy.

"You're pretty cold," Logan said sitting down on one of the stools and leaning over the counter.

"Cold? COLD?!" He didn't have any right to say something like that to Louise. "You were talking about writing Rudy and me up for stuff we didn't do. Stuff that could get us expelled. You don't get to call me cold

Logan's face flushed red with embarrassment.

"I didn't mean it in a bad way." He tried desperately to backtrack. "I think it's cool that you do crap like that. It's like me when I was your age."

"Are you serious? You're still pulling the same crap as a frickin teacher." Louise wasn't about to let Logan pretend that he didn't still act just as mean. Just because he had a degree and a job and could vote didn't really make him an adult.

"Not really," Logan said, denying the accusation. "I really only do that stuff to you."

 _What the crap! You only act like a total ass to me? Are you a five-year-old pushing down girls on the playground you like?_

"Are you alright, Louise? You're eye is twitching a lot."

Louise's face was contorted as she bit the inside of her cheek. Her hand swept over the counter, searching for anything to throw at his head, but unfortunately, she only felt a single napkin.

"Of course I'm not alright! You just told me that you treat me like crap and you're nice to everybody else! I thought you liked me, Logan. That's not how you tell people you like them. And that's coming from someone who would rather slap the boys she likes instead of kissing them."

"I didn't understand that last part, but I'm really sorry about how I've been to you."

"I guess that's something," Louise still wasn't happy, but it was a start, she supposed. She had known she was going to demand an apology from him eventually for being such a jerk, but that was when she thought he was mean to everybody. The revelation that he had been out to get her and only her kind of showed how messed up he was. Did she have much of a right to complain about somebody else being messed up after all the stuff she pulled on a semi-regular basis? Maybe not. But she also wasn't a 20-something teacher picking on a student she was supposed to have a crush on. That made it worse, in her head.

"So, you like me, right?" Logan asked, shocking Louise away from her disappointing thoughts. "I mean, you already figured out I like you, but you haven't said that you like me. You do, right?"

"I mean, I was thinking I did," Louise admitted, very unsure of how to continue the conversation. What was she really expecting to happen when they were done? She hadn't ever even had a real boyfriend, so she didn't know how normal people asked each other out. And this definitely was not a normal situation.

Logan was getting nervous now. He had felt confident coming in, knowing Louise had basically admitted she liked him back in the school halls. He was kind of stuck now.

"You're right," Logan said. "I like you and I've been bullying you since you were like twelve."

"I was NINE," she corrected him. "Still creepy, though, you freak." She couldn't help but smile as his face showed his embarrassment.

"I didn't like you like _that_ when you were nine," he tried to save himself sounding too weird. He was staring at his hands on the counter as he talked. "But I did think you were a cool kid and I guess I went out of my way to mess with you."

There was a long silence as the two of them avoided eye contact. Somebody was going to have to talk soon or maybe Bob would come in and save them.

"So what do we do now?" Louise asked, genuinely unsure of what was supposed to happen after they let out all their sappy feelings.

"I guess we could go on a date or something," Logan offered.

"Won't you get fired if somebody finds out?"

Definitely not something Logan wanted to happen. If he was going to go out in public with Louise, they'd need to find a way for nobody to know it was them.

"What about Halloween?" Logan offered. "Halloween is in two weeks. We could wear masks and go do something fun, like a haunted house or something."

"That actually sounds smart. I'm impressed." Louise thought Logan was cute. Not smart.

"Well, you are looking at a straight B student." Logan pretended to be very proud of the accomplishment. The two of them laughed over the restaurant counter at Logan's dumb joke.

"You do realize that Halloween is only once a year, right?" Louise asked, wondering if Logan had thought ahead any further.

"We can figure out one thing at a time." It was obviously Logan's way of not having to use anymore brain power. Maybe he was all tapped out after that bright idea for Halloween. "And don't worry about coming in for teacher's aide tomorrow," he added. "You can just go home early on those days."

"Some girls want flowers and chocolate, but I'm good with what you're handing out." Louise had a big, dumb grin stuck on her face and she could feel it, but she couldn't seem to stop doing it. There was a fluttery feeling in her stomach and she was feeling light, as if she was about to float off the ground. "I'll still accept chocolate, too, if you got some."

"You can still come by the classroom if you want to hang out. We can watch a movie or look at funny pictures on the internet. We'll just do our real date on Halloween."

It sounded like Logan didn't want to wait two weeks to see her again, so Louise responded, "You can come by the restaurant, too. Just don't expect me to cook anything for you."


	13. Chapter 13

**Author's Notes:** I'm a little conflicted posting this chapter. The tone changes drastically from the previous chapters because they're starting a real relationship and I want it to be a healthy one that isn't built on them being abusive to each other, like you'd expect from the cartoon's dynamic. We end up with more romance and drama than humor in this chapter, but I hope it's a good culmination of what we've been building to in this story. And this is only the start of their relationship, so the story isn't over yet.

 _I'm really doing this_. Louise sat cross-legged on her bed in jeans and a t-shirt, wearing the same knit cap she had worn to the homecoming dance, still decked out in rainbow and unicorn pins. The room was dark except for a candle burning on the nightstand. This was Halloween and she wanted to set up a haunting mood for herself before the night turned into who-knows-what.

Halloween was tied with Christmas as her favorite holiday. She wasn't a weirdo like her father, who loved Thanksgiving. Halloween and Christmas, though, were the only two times of year you could get so much good stuff for free. And while Halloween only offered cavity-inducing candy, Christmas wasn't known for pranks or thrills, like Halloween. Throughout her teendom, Louise had managed to narrowly avoid being arrested on more than one occasion for graffiti and other petty kinds of petty vandalism. One year, she and Gene spent all night stealing pumpkins to stack in front of Jimmy Pesto's entrance. It took all night and must have been a hundred pumpkins stacked up in a sort of wall six feet high. The formation was just stable enough to stand on its own, but a rope was rigged to one particular pumpkin that Gene informed her was a "keystone" that caused the entire wall to collapse on Jimmy Pesto when they yanked on it from the alley around the corner. In hindsight, Jimmy Pesto could have been seriously hurt, but it was hard to feel sorry for the shmuck.

The horror theme was great, too. Louise enjoyed the blood and gore of many scary movies. She was particularly proud of herself when she could watch a scene without flinching that caused others around her to look away. Her first real crush might have been Boo Boo from Boyz4Now, but not long after that she discovered Freddy Krueger. Sure, he was hideous and terrifying, but she could definitely relate to wanting to murder all the people who gave her crap with a crazy knife glove.

"Are we really okay with this, Lin?" Louise heard her father from the living room. "You made it sound like she just had a crush on him. I didn't expect Logan to ever ask her out. Don't you think this is kind of irresponsible as parents?"

The voices were faint. Her dad knew she was home and was trying to be quiet, but Louise had made out the sentence well enough. She tip-toed to the door and pressed her ear against it.

"Look, Bobby," her mother came to her defense. "We raised all of our children to make their own decisions as long as it doesn't put them in danger. She's gonna be 18 soon and if we don't give her the freedom to make her own choices while we can supervise her, she's not gonna be good at it when she's on her own."

"I get that, Lin," her dad said frustrated. "But this isn't about her getting some piercings. Doesn't the age difference bother you at all?"

"Not really. He sounds like he acts younger than he is. I mean, do you remember how immature he was when we first met him? So pouty. You could just tell how spoiled he was. Little brat, that one."

"I guess you're right," her dad admitted. "But if things don't work out, we need to make sure he doesn't use his teaching position to harass her."

"We'll march right down to that school and get him fired if he does. Nobody's gonna hurt my baby. Nuh-uh! Mama Bear Belcher takes care of her cubs." Then her mom made a sound that Louise guessed was supposed to be a bear growling.

Louise didn't ever want to have kids, but if she did, she hoped she was as good at parenting as her mom and dad. Hopefully, less embarrassing than the two of them.

The door bell made Louise jump. Eavesdropping gave her major anxiety and the sudden noise caused her heart to race. It took her a moment to calm her nerves before blowing out the candle and grabbing a black bundle of clothing from the foot of her bed. The delay had given her dad time to answer the door.

"It's okay with us. We just don't want Louise having a hard time at school if this doesn't work out." He was repeating what she had heard him say just a few seconds ago.

"I know I'm kind of a jerk, Mr. Belcher," Logan's voice replied from down the staircase. "But I wouldn't treat her differently because of personal stuff. I'm trying really hard to be a good teacher."

"Well, good teachers usually don't date their students, but I get what you mean." Louise peeked over the banister just in time to see Logan looking at the floor embarrassed by what her dad had just pointed out. She was impressed that he was standing there in some black robes and a hood. Scary costumes were the right way to do Halloween.

"Ahem!" Louise cleared her throat as she started walking down the stairs with the black bundle under her arm.

After a few clunky goodbyes from both of the Belcher parents, Louise was finally off on an official, real, how-in-the-heck-is-this-really-happening date with Logan. The door closed behind them and Logan quickly threw on the white Ghostface mask to complete his Scream outfit and hide his identity from the passersby on the sidewalk.

"No freakin way!" Louise screamed. She fumbled with the black bunch of fabric until she was able to slide the costume robes over her head. She produced a Ghostface mask, too, and pulled the elastic band over her head. They looked identical except Logan was more than a head taller than Louise and the black robes didn't hang past his shins, leaving blue jeans and tennis shoes visible. Louise, on the other hand, was so short the outfit was obviously going to drag on the concrete as she walked.

"Are you stalking me? How did you know I love that movie?" Louise pestered him with a muffled voice under the mask.

"I didn't. I just thought nobody would recognize me dressed like this." That was a letdown answer if Louise ever heard one.

"If you wanted to butter me up, that was a good time to just lie and say you love the movie, too," she pointed out the missed opportunity.

"That's stupid. I don't want to trick you into liking me. You either do or you don't."

 _That's pretty fair,_ Louise noted.

"So what are we doing first? I haven't ever been on a real date," Louise informed him. "And this is Halloween, so there's extra pressure. I'm sacrificing a lot of egged houses for you right now."

"There's supposed to be a cool haunted house at Wonder Wharf. They have a clown theme this year. If you still want to hang out after I pee myself from that, we can pick up eggs from my house when I change pants. Just don't let me get arrested. It's way worse as an adult."

"Pssh!" Louise brushed off the idea. "I haven't been caught yet and I don't plan on starting now."

The walk to the wharf was dark and Louise frequently tripped over the dragging black cloth of her costume. It was difficult to talk with the masks on while they struggled to see where they were going through the tiny eye holes, but they needed to keep their faces hidden from all the familiar faces that might recognize one or both of them.

There was a bustling crowd of costumed children and teens along with cynical adults who had either shunned costumes or had stupid joke costumes. _A banana! That's your costume? Do you even know what this night is about? Go home and rethink your life!_

The line for the haunted house stretched out in all directions, zig-zagging its way through Wonder Wharf. Were they really going to stand for an hour to get five minutes of thrills? Yes. Yes, they were. It was Halloween and Louise hadn't attended a haunted house in the entire month of October. Now that idea had been suggested to her, she didn't want Halloween to pass by without doing it.

The two of them shuffled forward in line every few minutes, inching closer to the entrance. There was an eerie circus sound track playing over the wharf speakers. Louise couldn't see over the shoulders of everyone around her, so she had no idea how long they'd have to wait.

Logan pushed his mask up so that it rested on the top of his head. "I don't see anybody I know," he told her.

"Geez," Louise complained. "How long is this frickin line? I can't see over all you genetic freaks of nature. This is a line or people. Not giraffes!"

"Or," Logan clasped his hands together and then pointed toward Louise, "If everybody else is the same height, you might just be the freak here."

Louise cocked her head and looked up at him judgmentally. "I mean, maybe, but then I'd be wrong and that's just something I'm not okay with."

Logan smiled at that and hesitated a few seconds before asking, "Do you really want to see the line that badly?" He turned around and squatted down, gesturing for Louise to ride piggyback. It was kind of weird, she thought, but why the heck not?

With her arms latched around his neck, Louise was comfortable strapped onto Logan. He held her legs under his arms to keep her from slipping. It dawned on her that this was the first time they had touched like this and she wanted to make a jab at Logan about how he wished she was still nine, but she was enjoying the moment too much to start at it.

From Logan's point-of-view, Louise could see the haunted house. The slapped-together plywood structure was painted in bright colors with creepy cardboard clowns leaning up against it.

It took a while for the two to reach the front of the line. Logan had to set Louise down half-way through, after he couldn't carry her anymore. It was a little disappointing, but it was nice while it lasted.

"Next!" A zombie clown called out. With nobody else in front of them the two moved forward and Logan paid the man.

Louise followed Logan as he pushed aside the curtain to the entrance of the questionably built shack. They followed the winding maze. The walls were just loosely hanging tarp. The circus music played, but there were the sounds of screams that drowned it out every once in a while. They got their first scare when a clown snuck up behind Louise and revved up his chainsaw. Louise noticed that Logan squealed even louder and longer than she did. It was funny, but she was kind of jealous that he could get so scared because the cheap jump scare didn't do it for her.

After that, Logan walked much slower and kept checking over his shoulder constantly. They came across a guy juggling colored balls in a grinning clown mask. Logan pressed his back up against the plywood wall and scooted past the colorful character. The clown followed Logan, keeping a safe distance, but still too close for Logan's comfort.

They came to a large open area with clown mannequins set up that the couple had to navigate through. Louise waited patiently for the real person in the crowd to lunge at them and sure enough it happened near the end of the room. Logan almost pushed her to the ground in a panic as he tried to back away.

The end had to be coming soon. Louise was surprised the attraction had lasted as long as it did after seeing how small it was from the outside. As she followed behind Logan, a hand tapped her on the shoulder. The clown had his finger to his lips, telling her to be quiet. He tip-toed around her and took Logan's hand.

"It's okay, Louise. I'll protect you," he said without looking back. Louise had to cover her mouth to not burst out laughing. There was a light coming up for the exit. "We're almost there," he tried to reassure Louise. "I just know one of those stupid clowns is going to jump out at me."

As they exited the tunnel leading to the back side of the haunted house, Logan turned back to Louise, still holding the clown's hand. Again, Logan let out a girlish scream as he jerked his hand away from the man in the clown suit. He gave the actor a shove and stomped away, all huffy.

Louise ran to catch up. "Oh, man! That was great! You should have seen your face. Wow! I can't believe you freaked out so bad."

"Screw you, Belcher!" Logan was speed walking now, trying to ditch her.

"What are you so upset for?" she asked. "This was your idea. Hey, slow down."

"I'm sorry I even bothered. This was a stupid idea." Logan was still striding away and Louise still had to jog to keep up. She almost tripped more than once over her long costume until she finally just held it as she ran.

"It. Was. Your. IDEA!" She repeated. "Why did you bring me here if you knew you were gonna get scared?"

"Becauase…" Logan stopped and faced her. "I thought I was a grown man that could handle it. I've always been scared of clowns, but I am 23-years-old and I should have been able to do that without having a heart attack."

"Well, you didn't." Louise wasn't going to lie and tell him he did okay. "You freaked out and you screamed like a little girl. But I don't care because I had fun. And I'm gonna make fun of you for it for, like, ever. But I still like you and maybe I'll tell you something I'm really scared of sometime and I'll let you see me wig out over it. Just stop throwing a fit or you're gonna ruin my favorite holiday."

Logan closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"You're right," he admitted. "I'm throwing a tantrum, but I don't care! I'm mad at you for letting that clown make me look stupid and I'm done with this date. Goodbye, Belcher!"

Logan was walking away again, but Louise wasn't having it. She ran up and grabbed him by the arm, jerking him around to face her.

"Look, you're being stupid. I like you and everything was going great. I get that you're embarrassed and if you need to go get a change of pants, we can. But don't frickin mess this up, Logan. C'mon!"

There was definitely a struggle going on in Logan's mind. Louise could see it in his face. He was stubborn and had a crappy temper and if he kept walking away after this, Louise was going to let him go.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "Do you still want to hang out?"

"Good," Louise accepted his apology in her own way. "I'm kind of bummed out now, but we can try it again without clowns some other time, if you want."

The disappointment on Logan's face was obvious.

"I'll tell you what," Louise said. "If you give me a piggyback ride home, I'll forget all about the bad stuff tonight and just remember when I was having fun."

Louise got her wish and she got to wrap her arms around Logan's neck once again. By the time they reached Mort's, Logan had slowed down and Louise worried that he might fall over from exhaustion, but he was dedicated to finishing the job.

"So, anyways the movie is really good because you don't see it coming that it was two killers wearing the same costume. I mean, you'll see it coming now that I told you, but it's still really cool. There's this one scene where the killers are stabbing each other because they want to frame Sydney's dad and it's just so sick. I love it!"

Logan set her down and let his back hit the wall between the restaurant window and the door leading upstairs. He slid down to a sitting position. Louise unlocked the door and began to open it while she looking at Logan on the ground.

"I know you think this went bad, but that was honestly the best date I've ever been on," she told him.

"Didn't you say this was your first date?" Logan looked up at her. It was neat to switch positions like that.

"Well, sure, but it's still true." The idea popped into her mind just then and if she didn't do it, she knew she'd kick herself over it. So she leaned down, closed her eyes and went in for a kiss. It didn't last long, but hours later she'd swear she could still feel his lips pressed against hers. She stayed up all night with horror movies playing in the background, obsessing over how his body felt pushed up against her as he carried her and how strong he had been.


End file.
